A Voice for Men’s media blitz continues apace. On Sunday, fresh on the heels of his colleague Robert O’Hara’s often cringeworthy Al Jazeera interview, AVFM “managing editor” Dean Esmay appeared on the unfortunately named “Let it Rip,” a news show on the local Fox affiliate in Detroit, to discuss that upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference we’ve been hearing so much about.
The excitable Esmay, wearing a tie at least a foot longer than necessary and facing off against a far more polished Heather Dillaway, a feminist sociologist from Wayne State University, did not exactly dispel the notion that the Men’s Rights movement isn’t ready for its close up just yet.
Esmay robotically rattled off an assortment of the sort of phony “factoids” that go over well only in the echo chambers of the Men’s Rights movement, and responded to questions not with answers but with rapidly regurgitated talking points — at one point declaring, to the bemusement of Prof. Dillaway and the rest, that
Ideological feminism is a multi-billion dollar hate industry funded by lies about rape and domestic violence, and they are the cause of a lot of very civil-rights trashing laws like the Violence Against Women Act even though we know that domestic violence is not a gendered issue.
Yes, he did say “a lot of very civil-rights trashing laws.”
Esmay also set forth a few arguments that he seemed to have made up right there on the spot, and which probably could have used a bit more workshopping. When the female half of Fox News’ tag team of hosts asked him “do you think you’re at a disadvantage because you’re a man,” he replied
I think many men are at a disadvantage specifically for a man. I’m certainly a working-class man. You see me sitting here with a missing tooth cause I can’t afford to fix it. This lady [gesturing at Dillaway] probably makes four times what I do.
Never mind that whatever differences there might be between their salaries have prety much nothing to do with gender and everything to do with class, and education, and probably most of all with the fact that Esmay is working for a dude who’s evidently bogarting all the donations for himself. Never mind that women still earn less than men for the same work. (And yes, MRAs, they do.)
Apparently, as long as there’s any woman in the world who makes more money than Dean Esmay, men are oppressed.
Let’s just call this the Esmay principle.
Anyway, I’m not going to bother to transcribe anything more. The only other memorable remark from Esmay was one he slipped in at the very end, suggesting that A Voice for Men might possibly be pulling out from the Doubletree hotel. What this means for their conference, I don’t know.
Back on A Voice for Men, meanwhile, Esmay was treated as a returning hero for facing down “two raving lunatic feminists and one Purple Poodle” –that last term the AVFMers’ new synonym for the old standby “mangina.”
“Standing O for Dean Esmay,” wrote his boss at AVFM, Paul Elam, in the comments. “Perfect delivery of our message and our attitude. Well done, brother.”
Susie Parker, meanwhile, wrote:
I thought Dean was pretty great. Measured, thoughtful, implacable. Any one of us feel we could have gotten more people on the Titanic lifeboats, but Dean was the man who held his cool and actually did the heroic deed.
I just hope the “people” she imagines Dean helping into the Titanic lifeboats were men! No “women and children first” for the AVFM crowd!
The reviews for Prof. Dillaway were a little less kind.
“[S]tupid ignorant bitch,” wrote one.
“What a self-centered bitch,” another agreed.
Others in the comments, and on the AVFM Forums, described her as a “cunt,” “the jabbering feminist liar,” the “smirking feminit [sic] professor,” and “the feminastie ‘Prof,”’ among other epithets. Indeed, perhaps half a dozen commenters referred to her professorship in derogatory terms, or put the word “professor” in scare quotes.
Some of the commenters were especially galled that Dillaway reacted to some of Esmay’s most ridiculous flights of fancy by … smiling. Several saw this as proof of the depth of her feminist depravity. Mike Buchanan remarked indignantly that
Early on, while you were outlining a number of areas in which men’s and boys’ life outcomes are so poor, the ‘professor’ was smiling through them all. As always, these damnable women don’t even PRETEND to care, so deep is their misandry.
Yeah, that’s not why she was smiling, dude. At that point, I was smiling too. That’s what you do when your opponent in a debate basically soils himself onstage.
Even those who offered – almost invariably mild – critiques of Esmay’s appearance couldn’t bring themselves to say anything positive about his opponent. Wrote PlainOldTruth:
At least we can say Esmay earned his paycheck here. Mopre than you can say fort the Princess Studies professor whose every paycheck represents an act of larceny and fraud: a slap in the face of people who do real work and who, when they teach, teach the truth.
Not that anyone at AVFM would recognize the truth if it came riding in on a Purple Poodle. Indeed, Darryl Jewett managed to win himself more than a dozen upvotes from his comrades for his distinctly revisionist precis of world history:
Throughout history and in every society including all of them today, women are and always have been the most privileged demographic. Where ever and whenever you hear women whining that they are oppressed, men are oppressed far worse. And usually by the women . On average, women consume way more than men and produce far less. To replenish those resources which women consume in great excess, men are sent to fight endless wars and forced to work as slaves long past the time they should be working and can. Children are often used as excuses to force men to work under threat of imprisonment even if they can’t anymore.
The strangest reaction of all, though, came from a commenter called DEDC, who used the occasion as an opportunity to attack, er, me, and to suggest that the real problem was that MRA’s weren’t using the words “bitch” and “cunt” often enough.
No, really.
The whole reason we are a hate site is because fucktards like Futrelle, failed journalist (see Bart Sibrel) that he is, keeps seeding these attacks based on nothing other than that we refer to some women as cunts and bitches (who desperately deserve it). Nobody, not even US, say that calling a man a prick or asshole (gender specific) is misandric just on that basis. The level of projection and hyper-sensitivity and denial are mind-boggling in magnitude. Just look at that entitlement. It shocks us to use these slurs against a woman because they have never really encountered them before.
It is like I say with Islame-O fascists: the answer to their hypersensitivity to jokes or cartoons of their prophet is MORE! It shouldn’t even be a second thought at all to call a female a cunt who IS a cunt.
I’ve rarely seen any group of people so determined to learn less from their mistakes.
—
If you actually managed to sit through more than a minute or two of that TV segment, you deserve a reward. So here’s a video for the song Nunki, by the band Dva, off their album NIPOMO, which I was listening to on repeat while writing this. The animation in the video was all done by children!
It’s the Bits Rights Movement. My labia don’t want to be squished either so I think we have competing priorities here in regards to men’s perceived need to air out their balls on public transit.
From what I understand, one reason that hermaphrodite is considered offensive by most intersex people is that it’s just factually incorrect. Hermaphrodite, in biology, means a creature with a DOUBLE set of genitalia – it has both female and male genitals. Snails are hermaphrodites, for instance – when two snails mate, they impregnate each other. Some people believe like intersex people do have double genitalia, like snails, and they’re scary for that reason. (There’s a terrible book by Dean Koontz featuring a hetmaphrodite villain who makes zirself pregnant and has a bunch of evil and deformed children…) But that’s really not what intersex is.
Regarding “asshole” being supposedly gender neutral (since all genders make doo doo) but assumed to be male-oriented by some: I think it ties partly to the idea of how neutral = male.
I guess they want asshole banned as being Menz Shaming just like creep is. Except it’s not, neither is gender-specific … and both are about behaviour.
Another hilarious tweet. One positive effect of #yesallwomen is that my twitter feed is now full of funny MRA-related jokes.
Argenti:
Hey, I’m one of those! Although in my case it was apparently a minor operation so I like to imagine I’d have survived even without surgery.
I think MRAs aren’t used to calling women assholes because they take every opportunity to use female-gendered slurs. Then they can conveniently pretend that random non-gendered slurs are male-gendered.
Meanwhile, half of them claim can’t isn’t a gendered slur because they use it on anyone.
Emilygoddess:
I don’t even know what exactly “satire” would mean in this context, and MRAs certainly don’t. They probably mean something like
“We talk over the top to mock the strawMRAs feminists criticize, because we’re not really like that. Or something. If you can’t figure out what we really want, screw you.”
Rik Mayall has passed away. 🙁
I saw that too, he was so funny. I have the entire The Comic Strip Presents collection on DVD.
🙁
I haven’t actually seen him in many things. Mainly I think of him as Dominic De’Ath in In the Red.
Anybody who makes you feel bad about your gender is a douchecanoe and is uninvited from all the picnics forever.
Aah, long ago memories of The Young Ones. Then Lord Flashheart in Blackadder (“Woof! Woof!”). And steeling a couple of episodes of Jonathan Creek with all that energy and that evil grin. 🙁
kittehserf, you actually have a cane covered in cats (well, cat pictures)! That’s awesome!
I always pretend I can’t see them. Sometimes they break just before they get to me, but they’ve never walked into me yet.
Cars, on the other hand, if I’m in a crosswalk or crossing at a reasonable place where there is no crosswalk, if they don’t slow down enough I do stare at them: “Hey, you want to risk my life, go ahead, but you’ll see my face while you do!”
@ Viscara
I don’t know why, but I want this embroidered on a pillow, or printed on an old timey country wood print. Something cutesy and covered in kittens and geese wearing ribbons.
All thanks to it being linked here, too! 😀
I’ve found cars will slow down more often now I’ve a stick, too. Maybe it’s the kitty thought beams shooting out at them.
Funny, the one place I found that treating a zebra crossing as if it was MINE and naturally the cars will stop was Paris, of all places. For all its reputation for having shocking drivers, it did seem to be that if you acted that way, they’d stop. Only time I had any trouble was a rotten motor-bike courier screaming past way too close when I was standing in the plaza outside Notre Dame.
Groups of people who refuse to yield any space for people walking the other way annoy the heck out of me too. That goes doubly for if they give you a dirty look. (I’m sorry, did you reserve this sidewalk for this time? Is this your sidewalk? I apologize, I must have missed the signage.)
Me and boyfriend had a stressful first day or two in San Francisco because the drivers there won’t break for pedestrians until quite late, as compared to drivers at home. We had a few OH GOD OH GOD THIS IS THE END moments where we assumed a driver had not seen us, because if they had they would have been breaking already.
Crossing the street in San Francisco can be like playing Frogger irl. Mr C and I both grew up in places where that was the norm, though, so we find it kind of funny how much it sometimes freaks out people who aren’t used to it.
Dude who lived where I used to work would cross St Kilda Road that way, which is fucking stupid, because 1) he was right next to a set of pedestrian lights, 2) it’s a freaking four-lane highway and you can’t see cars cresting the hill and coming toward you at that point, and 3) crossing that way isn’t the culture here – drivers won’t be looking out for pedestrians. If he wanted to get himself run over, fine, go for the Darwin Award, but he had an Irish Wolfhound with him, and what freaking right had he to endanger the dog’s life?
I was just in SF over Memorial Day weekend and was shocked at the road behavior! Especially the bicyclists, who seem to feel entitled to any space they can fit in, stop lights be damned! More than once I watched a cyclist inch out into an intersection on a red light, waiting for an oncoming car to slow down enough for them to zip through.
We are much more polite up here in Portland 😛
People here completely ignore the light color and just cross randomly whenever and wherever they feel like it because hey! a sign said they have the RIGHT OF WAY. It’s amazing there aren’t more pedestrian accidents.
katz – that tweet was hilarious. I love that he had to mention he was a Google glass user.
Q: How many Men’s Rights Conventioneers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: 3 + 3 + 2, for a total of 7.
(I still haven’t seen an adequate explanation of the security math from that Doubletree letter.)
Both Esmay and Bloomfield said last week that answers would be forthcoming within days.
He made a comment somewhere about lawyers handling things. Twitter maybe?
I would be scared to cycle in the street here, honestly. Between the way people drive and the way other people cycle and randomly Frogger-ing pedestrians and MUNI tracks that your tires can get caught in, it’s pretty dangerous. I’d only been here for a couple of years the first time that someone I knew got killed riding their bike in The Mission.
The worst is when you’re crossing at a crosswalk on a green light and still almost get hit because so many drivers can’t be bothered to make sure it’s clear before making a right turn. One guy even honked angrily at me.
My city recently made a bunch of bike lanes. Which is great in principle. However, bikers often forget they are supposed to follow traffic laws. Pedestrians and drivers alike can never predict what they’re going to and that can be a little scary.
@michelle
Well, I for one, am jealous, cuz we’re scraping the bottle of the barrel for soap here, this week. 😉 It was food, soap, and hay*, pick two.
*for guinea pigs.
@brittersweet
And, uh, also a slur where I live, so can we not use it?*
*maybe you can still use it when talking about cigarrettes, but that wasn’t the context.
@michelle
^and imo that was put very good.
re: canes
Fade says four point canes are hard for her to lift up, so she has a single point cane with an attactment. 😀
(and fade will be here less cuz she started ehr summer semester 🙁 )
@artic ape
Is asshole really a slur? Maybe I’m arguing over semantics here, but it seems mroe just like a curse word. I mean, when I think of slurs, I think of words that have been used to oppress people.
aaannnddd I think this comment got way too long, so posting 😀
fade says:
You want to know what’s really scary? Crossing teh streets in the in a wheelchair.
Fade thinks the drivers often aren’t paying attention.
It often scares me how little attention people pay.
What scares me even more is this: drivers are less likely to stop for black pedestrians waiting to use a crosswalk than white ones.
Which indicates people’s prejudices and biases come into play when they decide to zoom by.
Which means ablism probably also factors into them not paying any attention.
Which is a very scary thought.